The IRS published Notice 1036 on January 11, 2018. The notice contains early release copies of the Percentage Method Tables for Income Tax Withholding that will appear in IRS Publication 15 (Employers Tax Guide for use in 2018). Publication 15 will be posted on the IRS website in January 2018.

Implementation of the information published in IRS Notice 1036 will require only a tax table update in the PeopleSoft Payroll for North America product. As the IRS previously indicated on December 26, 2017, the 2018 withholding changes are designed to work with existing Forms W-4 that employees have already filed.

The IRS advises that employers should implement the 2018 withholding tax changes as soon as possible, but no later than February 15. We intend to deliver scripts during the week of January 15 for all releases which will update the tax table with the 2018 withholding changes. We will also provide step by step instructions for entering the tax table update manually for those customers with payrolls in progress who wish to apply the update prior to receiving the delivered script. See Document 2348297.1 for instructions.

In their news release IR-2018-05, the IRS states that they are working on revising Form W-4, but that employees and employers should continue to use the 2017 version of Form W-4 until any new Form W-4 is issued. Once the IRS releases a new Form W-4, we will analyze the new Form W-4 to determine what product modifications may be needed to implement the new form.

Watch this blog space and Payroll Hot Topics for updated information as it becomes available.